


The PR Guy

by captainpeggy



Category: The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Multi, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 16:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5710084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainpeggy/pseuds/captainpeggy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark is a friggin' YouTube star and he'd be even better if he didn't swear so much. Really this is just 2k of domestic fluff feat. the crew</p><p>Partially inspired by <a href="http://hogwartshiddenswimmingpool.tumblr.com/post/129675279048/ok-so-its-like-what">this</a> tumblr post.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The PR Guy

**i. botany 101**

 

The kid was grinning widely into his crappy school webcam, every single tooth showing: ecstatic, what was this, he was _ten_ and talking to a real damn-- sorry, _darn--_ astronaut! How many fifth-graders could say that? It wasn’t exactly a closed line, hardly a heart-to-heart, but he’d asked a man in space a question, space, fucking _space,_ dammit.

“Mr. Watney, sir, how do you grow plants in space?”

Thpace. Little guy still had a lisp.

Mark smiled: he liked doing this, teaching kids. What he wouldn’t have given to talk to an astronaut when he’d been that age. “Well, we’ve got a whole bunch of different stuff we’re trying out. Growing stuff in water, that’s called hydroponics. And we’re trying out some fancy goop, you take these crystals and you just fuckin’--”

Johanssen rolled her eyes and whacked the spacebar, bleeping out the swear. “Watch the mouth, Watney!” She was bored. It had been a long conference, and her finger was getting tired. She’d tried to get Vogel to switch with her, but he’d stared at her with a look that clearly said _I wouldn’t take that job in a million years._

Mark thought he could see an extra tooth appear at the corner of the kid’s mouth. Nothing better than catching an adult in a foulmouthed moment. “Sorry, dude. So like I was saying, you mix the crystals with this shit called--”

“WATNEY!” Click of the keyboard, beep of the audio. “Just because they don’t hear the words doesn’t mean they can’t tell, you fucking idiot, _everyone_ knows what the beep means!”

There was a long silence, and then:

“Your mic’s on, Beth,” smirked Mark.

“Oh, fuck.”

On screen the kid’s face was about to split in two.

“Lewis is watching this, you know-- oh, Jesus, we’re a train wreck--”

“Hydroponics!” yelped Mark. “It’s so cool, man. Look it up. So many uses.”

Beck frowned at them from the other side of the camera. _If you google hydroponics, you get forums for marijuana growers,_ he mouthed.

“Or don’t! The goop, you know, the goop is called sodium polyacrylate. It slurps up water. We mix it with this crap-- oh, _fuck,_ ” and then Vogel dropped the camera, and they were in the middle of the ship so it drifted off-- and Johanssen’s entire face wrinkled up as she laughed, and Mark reached over and cut the chat.

 

**ii. singing is the most fun an astronaut can have without taking his clothes off**

 

The screaming was coming from Mark’s botany lab.

Quiet screaming, granted. More squawking than screaming, but Melissa Lewis didn’t tolerate panicked stress-yells of any form on her ship, and it was a damn botany lab, what the hell did have to scream about? Radishes not sprouting? Good. Lewis didn’t like radishes, and she hadn’t since she found one floating in her toilet and had mistaken it for a bloody tampon.

Her roommate had gotten a long talk about composting that night.

Lewis had switched to eating carrots.

She passed Vogel as she clambered up the ladder, pulling herself off to the side so the man could slip past. “It’s Mark,” he said by way of explanation. “He’s singing.”

“My God.”

“Yup,” said Vogel, hopping down onto the floor and shaking his newly heavy legs. “That was my reaction too. Ask him to do Eleanor Rigby for you, or maybe Anaconda. The classics, mm?”

“Right,” replied Lewis.

“If you plug your ears and view it as a purely aesthetic performance, it’s a lot better. Freak he may be, but he’s still quite a specimen.”

“Right,” replied Lewis.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before continuing up.

It got louder as she got lighter: by the time she hit the 0G lab and drifted off the rungs, she was reasonably sure her ears were bleeding. Johanssen had one foot looped around a strap on the wall and was holding a camera, lens directed down the hall at the most ridiculous scene the commander had ever had in her field of view.

“Don’t tell him I’m filming,” whispered Beth.

Mark was shrieking Bohemian Rhapsody passionately at a bin of sprouts, the creak of old floorboards and a motorcycle rumble mixing in the worst imaginable manner. He had one hand gripping the edge of the sealed box and the other clasped close to his chest, and as Lewis watched in fear, he released the plants to float, did a full somersault, and bellowed something unintelligible.

Lewis turned to the younger woman. “You’re getting all of this?” she muttered.

“Unfortunately,” said Johanssen. “I get to send this to NASA, right?”

The squawking reached a crescendo; Lewis wasn’t even sure what the man was singing anymore.

“Taylor Swift,” Johanssen nodded approvingly. “Good selection.”

“Isn’t she the one who writes fluffy pop songs?”

“I think it’s a remix.”

“Hell of a remix.”

“I _do_ get to send this to NASA, right? Because he’s got, like, twelve thousand followers on YouTube and twice that on Vine--”

The noise halted abruptly, and Mark dropped the plants to drift about in the zero gravity. Lewis shook her head from the shock of quiet. “Watney?”

“Oh! Hey, Commander, how’s it shakin’? I was just, um.”

“Yes, the whole ship could hear you--” she pulled herself up into the lab with an eye roll. “Singing, was it?”

Silence.

“This is _so_ going to NASA,” yelped Johanssen, clearly desperate to fill the audio void.

 

**iii. hardcore parkour**

 

“Is that Johanssen’s camera?”

Mark appraised the device in his hand. “Mm. My stellar vocal performances pleased NASA, so they made Beth hand it over for the day-- hoping I’ll do something clever, I guess.”

Martinez grinned. “This is clever.”

“Nope, it’s _fucking stupid,”_ declared Mark gleefully. “I love it.”

The two were wedged together on the ladder up through the center of the ship: if they followed it, they’d get lighter and lighter as they moved closer to the middle, then heavier as they descended towards the other side. Martinez reached up to the next rung, giggled like a five-year-old, and jumped: a foot-high hop, but he flew upwards and was suddenly floating in the middle of the ship. “Whoooo!” he yelled.

“Do something immature,” ordered Mark.

Martinez pushed off the wall and spun over backwards, coming out of the flip with both middle fingers up and an impressive pout. “I’m not your dancing bear, Watney!”

“Yeah you are,” said Mark. He tossed the camera up, a gentle lob carrying it just to the center of the ship. “I hate gravity,” he said, pleased with himself. “What’s the point?”

“Preventing bone and muscle degradation and allowing us to carry out ordinary daily activities without specialized equipment?” commented Beck from his disapproving stance on the other side of the hall.

“That’s what she said,” replied Mark.

Martinez frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense, man, come on.”

“I’ll go ask Johanssen, _she’ll_ probably get it--”

“Come on, Mark, drop it,” grumbled Beck.

Mark threw his hands up. “Dropped!”

“I came here in case one of you needs to be defibrillated, not so you can needle me about the relationship I’m _not in--_ ”

“I dropped it! See? It’s lying on the floor, right there, which is possible because we have _gravity…_ ”

Martinez interrupted. “How about you two get back to your sexual tension later?”

“We’re not--” said Mark.

“Shut up,” said Beck.

“Yeah, shut up,” Mark agreed. “Martinez, come on, NASA’s counting on us.”

Martinez made a face and eyed the ladder. “I could probably do something cool diving down through here…”

“ _No,_ ” said Beck emphatically.

 _“Yes,_ ” said Mark, equally so. “Parkour!”

The first man took a breath and dramatically cracked his neck. “All right, here we go--” He spun slowly around, then started to pull himself down the ladder headfirst. Mark watched with bated breath. Beck closed his eyes.

In one second, Martinez was sinking; in two, he was falling with a whoop, and in three tumbling with a girlish scream that echoed off the metal walls: he fell with a loud thump onto the floor, curling his arms up around his head as he landed. “FUUU--”

“Is he dead?” winced Beck.

“Are you dead?” called Mark. “If you are, that was still the tightest shit I’ve ever seen--”

“Not dead,” Martinez groaned, flashing a thumbs up. “That was great.”

“Nice… uh. Can you do it again maybe? I wasn’t--”

“You weren’t filming, were you,” came a moan from Beck.

“Fuck yeah I’ll do it again,” Martinez grinned. “Just… as soon as the pain goes away.”

 

**iv. winner winner chicken dinner**

 

The cooking show had been Mark’s idea, of course. He’d tried to talk Martinez into joining, but he’d said he’d rather just watch the white people crash and burn: the end result being that it was all Mark and Lewis, living it up in the kitchen with Beth working the video. Her favourite job. At least this time it wasn’t live: no censor duties, for once.

Beck, of course, was off in the corner with a snack tube. _Lame,_ Beth mouthed.

 _Your mom’s lame,_ he mouthed back, squeezing a little more of the goop out.

Mark addressed the camera formally. “Ladies, gentlemen, others and neithers: we are gathered here today for that most spectacular of events--” Beth panned out as he threw his arms wide-- “THE FIRST! EVER! SPACE COOK-OFF!” A huge grin split his face. “Botanist versus commander… who will win? Who will live? Who will die?”

“Nobody’s dying,” Beck mumbled over a mouthful of applesauce. “I know the Heimlich.”

“Don’t listen to Beck,” declared Mark. “He’s taking out all the drama! So here’s the rules-- there are no rules! It’s a pulse-pounding free-for-all today aboard the _Hermes,_ and everything’s fair game!”

Lewis tightened her ponytail. “Watney, calm down.”

He wheeled on her, smiling widely. “Are you telling me to tone _down_ my joy and excitement at the chance to KICK YOUR ASS!?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m your commanding officer.”

“That is true,” conceded Mark, patting her on the shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Apology accepted, seeing as I’ll be the only one kicking any ass today,” she smirked.

“Ooh,” muttered Beck, teasing out the last dregs from the tube. “Sick burn.”

Mark scooped two silver packets off the counter and held them up. “Beth, if you would?”

Beth zoomed in on the foil for dramatic effect and counted down loudly. “THREE! TWO! ONE! LET IT BEGIN!”

Lewis scrambled for the pantry while Mark tore the packages frantically open, extricating a freeze-dried cookie and some beef jerky. “I’m going for a really unique flavour combo here,” he narrated as he spread the food out on a tray and reached for the ketchup. “Melding tastes from around the world--”

“He’s not really gonna do that, is he?” Beck said in horror.

“Naysayers be damned,” grinned Mark as he slathered the cookie in ketchup. “You’ve gotta take risks in this game!”

Lewis had found some dehydrated spaghetti in one of the cabinets and was piping some water into the package, brow furrowed in concentration. Beth poked her with a toe. “Commander! What sort of vibe are you going for today?”

The reply was distracted: Lewis’ mind was clearly focused on the task at hand. “An edible one, I think.”

“No imagination,” Mark muttered, mashing some relish into his mixture. “None at all.”

“They’re _your_ rations,” Lewis said nonchalantly as she shoved the spaghetti into the microwave. “Do what you want-- Johansson, you got a time check?”

Beth glanced at her watch. “Oooh… Mark, down to the wire, thirty seconds!”

“True magic takes time,” replied the man as he dripped pepper suspension out of a tiny bottle. “Patience is a virtue!”

Lewis pulled her spaghetti out of the oven and squeezed a dash of hot sauce into the bag, squishing it around to distribute the flavour. “Hurry it up, Watney.”

Beck closed his eyes. “I can’t look.”

“TIME!” yelled Beth. “Let’s see what you’ve got!”

Eyes still shut, Beck gestured to Lewis. “She wins. She wins.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for readin'!
> 
> and as always, a rec: Brooklyn 99, because sitcoms are great, queer characters are great, and Jake Peralta is a cutie.


End file.
